Operation Twist and the effect of large-scale asset purchases

The Federal Reserve's current large-scale asset purchase program, dubbed "QE2," has a precedent in a 1961 initiative by the Kennedy Administration and the Federal Reserve known as "Operation Twist." An analysis finds that four of six potentially market-moving Operation Twist announcements had statistically significant effects and that the program cumulatively caused a significant but moderate 0.15 percentage point reduction in longer-term Treasury yields. These results can be used to estimate QE2's effects.